Dave Meltzer: CMLL’s 2025 was ‘unprecedented in wrestling history’
CMLL’s historic 2025 was discussed on a recent episode of Wrestling Observer Radio.
Dave Meltzer and Garrett Gonzalez addressed the world’s oldest wrestling promotion winning the 2025 Wrestling Observer Newsletter Award for Promotion of the Year, saying that what CMLL accomplished over the past year was historic.
“What CMLL did and accomplished this last year is unprecedented in wrestling history,” Meltzer said on the show.
“I didn’t expect them to win by the margins (that they did), but I did think they absolutely were the company that should have won.”
Through 2025, CMLL drew 1.1 million fans to Arena Mexico. It marked the first time any company has topped 1 million fans in a single arena over the course of a year.
CMLL won the voting with 5,042 total points, including 746 first-place votes. AEW finished second with 3,557 total points and 364 first-place votes.
“AEW’s match quality likely played a big factor in the second-place finish. They did have the best PPV year perhaps of any company in history as far as in-ring show quality, and the numbers there stayed strong,” Meltzer wrote in this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
Meltzer and Gonzalez also discussed AEW’s 2025 on Observer Radio, with Meltzer noting that had AEW drawn better throughout the year, they may have finished first.
“A lot of the people who had that negativity about AEW… they kind of had to shut up this year,” Meltzer said.
“If they were out there drawing 10,000 people for TVs, they would have won, but they didn’t, and they weren’t, and they didn’t win.”
The full episode of Wrestling Observer Radio is available for subscribers. The 2025 Wrestling Observer Newsletter Awards issue is also available. A clip of Meltzer and Gonzalez discussing the awards can be found below:
Ian Carey is a writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, whose work has been featured in NOW Magazine, The Huffington Post, and more. A lifelong wrestling aficionado born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he has covered the industry for a decade and a half. He joined the f4wonline.com team in 2019.